1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a sheet containing device and an image forming apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 2011-201,703 (A1) discloses a medium stacking apparatus including a medium stacking unit stacking media and a guide member provided movably with respect to the medium stacking unit for regulating ends of the media. With this medium stacking apparatus, the guide member is secured to a prescribed position of the medium stacking unit upon engagement between plural locking projections formed at the guide member and plural locking projections formed on a bottom of the medium stacking unit.
In Japanese Patent Application Publication No. Hei 11-139,576 (A1), a sheet material feeding apparatus is disclosed in having an intermediate plate stacking sheet materials and a rear end regulation plate regulating the rear ends of the sheet materials stacked on the intermediate plate. With this sheet material feeding apparatus, a guide member having a rack is attached to the intermediate plate, and a lever having a rack is attached to the rear end regulation plate. The rack of the lever meshes the rack of the guide member by an urging spring, thereby locking the rear end regulation plate at a favorite position on a pitch unit basis of the racks. One end of the urging spring is structured to face recesses on the guide member in an engageable manner with elasticity, so that when the rear end regulation plate is made to slide, click feeling notifies the user of the locking positions of the standard sizes upon entry of the spring rear end into the recesses.
With the sheet containing apparatus having a sheet containing unit containing sheets such as, e.g., paper, a regulation member arranged movably with respect to the sheet containing unit for regulating the positions of the sheets, and a mechanism holding the position of the regulation member, however, it is desirable to reduce a load when releasing the holding state of the regulation member. For example, with the art set forth in the above Publication No. 2011-201,703, the locking projections have a large contact area and suffer from a large load when disengaged, because the plural locking projections formed at the guide member and the plural locking projections formed at the medium stacking unit are corresponding to each other one by one.
It is an object of the invention to provide a sheet containing device capable of reducing a load when releasing a holding state of a regulation member regulating the position of the sheets contained in a sheet containing unit, and an image forming apparatus including such a sheet containing device.